Today is your last day to make a gift to Cogswell Hall if you want it to count toward any 2018 tax deduction you will seek. Click the yellow button above to give online, or postmark your check by today!

As of 10 a.m. Dec. 31, generous donors such as you have answered Cogswell Hall's year-end appeal with gifts of $9,058! Each dollar goes to house and help low-income adults with disabling conditions. One of them, Doreen (right), is featured in the appeal, which started with a November mailing. Click the red button to see the difference just one year at Cogswell has made in Doreen's life. Thank you!

Photo by Sakina Kapasi

No more clothing donations for now, please

Because so many of you have been so generous, Cogswell Hall must stop accepting donations of clothing for now. We are out of room to store and sort it! Please take clothes to other good outlets in the neighborhood, such as St. Paul's Community Church, 4427 Franklin Blvd., and Needs Cleveland, 7710 Lorain Ave.; check their hours first.

We are still accepting other donated items, including specific undergarments. Click the button at left to see what's helpful.

Thanks to your generosity, it's been a beautiful December at Cogswell Hall.

Residents used earned points to buy gifts for themselves and others at a holiday boutique Dec. 13 in the Community Room (left). It featured a wide selection of donated items, managed and wrapped by volunteers ...

On Dec. 18, the annual holiday party for Board members, residents and volunteers featured music by Ariel Clayton and her young string students (right), dinner donated and served by the North Olmsted Junior Women's Club, and carols accompanied by a local church group ...

Residents received gift bags at the holiday party (left), and then more gifts on Christmas Eve from several Secret Santas, informed by wish lists the residents had completed earlier. Pictured with the Dec. 18 gift bags are Program Manager Diane Kragt (left) and Supportive Services staffer Sharon Parries ...

Residents are remembering people they love and miss by hanging paper ornaments with handwritten messages (right) on the blue naming tree in a nook near the dining room (below). As the new year begins, the Supportive Services staff will gather residents for an annual time of remembrance ...

All year long, you make Cogswell Hall a place to call home. Thanks!

Photos by Hans Holznagel and Sakina Kapasi

Farewell to Cogswell Hall's 140th year. Here's to more good work in 2019!

This concludes Cogswell Hall's 140th anniversary year of helping people in need. It's been a year of celebration. Characters from Cogswell's history showed up at an April tea. A big birthday cake appeared at a June "company picnic" in Lakewood Park. Our founders were toasted at the September Coming Home gala at the historic Bohemian National Hall.

Thanks go out to everyone who made this year a good one -- and, of course, to Mrs. Helen Cogswell and her Woman's Christian Temperance Union sisters who launched their downtown outreach center, the Open Door, in 1878. Their work lives on today here at 7200 Franklin Blvd. in the form of safe, affordable, permanent, supportive housing for 41 low-income women and men with disabling conditions. Here's to continuing the tradition in 2019!

The Cogswell Chronicle is published monthly by email, and once a year in print, by Cogswell Hall, 7200 Franklin Blvd., Suite 100, Cleveland OH 44102 USA. Editor: Hans Holznagel. Reporter: Sakina Kapasi. Comments? Questions? Email Hans at hholznagel@cogswellhall.org or phone him at 216-961-1568, ext 311.